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A syllable (Greek: )
is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word
water is composed of two syllables: wa and
ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins
(typically, consonants).

Syllablic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded
syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called 'the most
important advance in the history of writing'.

A word that consists of a single syllable (like Englishdog) is called a
monosyllable (such a word is
monosyllabic), while a word consisting of two
syllables (like puppy) is called a
disyllable (such a word is
disyllabic). A word consisting of three syllables
(such as Wolverine) is called a
trisyllable (the adjective form is
trisyllabic). A word consisting of more than three
syllables (such as intelligence) is called a
polysyllable (and could be described as
polysyllabic), although this term is often used to
describe words of two syllables or more.

Syllable structure

The general structure of a syllable consists of the following
segments:

Onset (obligatory in some
languages, optional or even restricted in others)

Coda (optional in some languages,
highly restricted or prohibited in others)

tree representation of a CVC
syllable

In some theories of phonology, these syllable structures are
displayed as tree diagrams (similar to
the trees found in some types of syntax). Not all phonologists
agree that syllables have internal structure; in fact, some
phonologists doubt the existence of the syllable as a theoretical
entity.

The syllable nucleus is typically a sonorant, usually making a vowel sound, in the form
of a monophthong, diphthong, or triphthong, but sometimes sonorant consonants like or . The syllable onset
is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and the
syllable coda (literally 'tail') is the sound or sounds
that follow the nucleus. The term rime covers the nucleus
plus coda. In the one-syllable English word cat, the
nucleus is a, the onset c, the coda t,
and the rime at. This syllable can be abstracted as a
consonant-vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated
CVC.

Generally, every syllable requires a nucleus. Onsets are extremely
common, and some languages require all syllables to have an onset.
(That is, a CVC syllable like cat is possible, but a VC
syllable such as at is not.) A coda-less syllable of the
form V, CV, CCV, etc. is called an open syllable
(or free syllable), while a syllable that has a coda (VC,
CVC, CVCC, etc.) is called a closed syllable (or
checked syllable). Note that they have nothing to do with
open and close
vowels. All languages allow open syllables, but some, such as
Hawaiian, do not have closed
syllables.

A heavy syllable is
one with a branching rime or branching nucleus –
this is a metaphor, based on the nucleus or coda having lines that
branch in a tree diagram. In some languages, heavy syllables
include both VV (branching nucleus) and VC (branching rime)
syllables, contrasted with V, which is a light
syllable. In other languages, only VV syllables (ones with
a long vowel or diphthong) are heavy,
while both VC and V syllables are light. The difference between
heavy and light frequently determines which syllables receive
stress—this is the case in
Latin and Arabic, for example. In moraic theory, heavy syllables are said
to have two moras, while light syllables are said to have one.
Japanese is generally described
this way.

In other languages, including English, a consonant may be analyzed as
acting simultaneously as the coda of one syllable and the onset of
the following syllable, a phenomenon known as
ambisyllabicity. Examples include words such as
arrow , error , mirror , borrow
, burrow , which can't be divided into separately
pronounceable syllables: neither nor is a possible independent
syllable, and likewise with the other short vowels .

Syllables and suprasegmentals

Sometimes syllable length is also
counted as a suprasegmental feature; for example, in some Germanic
languages, long vowels may only exist with short consonants and
vice versa. However, syllables can be analyzed as compositions of
long and short phonemes, as in Finnish and Japanese, where
consonant gemination and vowel length are independent.

Syllables and phonotactic constraints

Phonotactic rules determine which
sounds are allowed or disallowed in each part of the syllable.
English allows very complicated
syllables; syllables may begin with up to three consonants (as in
string or splash), and occasionally end with as
many as four (as in prompts). Many other languages are
much more restricted; Japanese,
for example, only allows and a chroneme in
a coda, and has no consonant clusters at all, as the onset is
composed of at most one consonant.

There are languages that forbid empty onsets, such as Hebrew and Arabic (the names transliterated as
"Israel", "Abraham", "Omar", "Ali" and "Abdullah", among many
others, actually begin with semiconsonantic glides or with glottal
or pharyngeal consonants).

Syllabification

Syllabification is the separation of a word into
syllables, whether spoken or written. In most languages, the
actually spoken syllables are the basis of syllabification in
writing too. However, due to the very weak correspondence between
sounds and letters in the spelling of modern English, for example,
written syllabification in English has to be based mostly on
etymological i.e. morphological instead of phonetic principles.
English "written" syllables therefore do not correspond to the
actually spoken syllables of the living language.

(Syllabification may also refer to the process of a
consonant becoming a syllable nucleus.)

Ambisyllabicity

Many English speakers have a strong feeling that consonants after
stressed short vowels belong with the previous syllable, , as in
competitive and better , and even with consonant
clusters, such as banker and selfish versus
shellfish . This is at odds with the universal tendency
for syllabification, and so the concept of ambisyllabicity
was developed, with the idea that these consonants are shared
between the preceding and following syllables. However, Wells
(2002)[7354] argues that this is not a useful
analysis, and that English syllabification is simply .

Syllables and stress

Syllable structure often interacts with stress. In Latin, for example, stress is regularly determined by
syllable weight, a syllable counting
as heavy if it has at least one of the following:

Syllables and vowel tenseness

In most Germanic languages,
lax vowels can only occur in closed
syllables. Therefore, these vowels are also called checked
vowels, as opposed to the tense vowels that are called
free vowels because they can occur in open
syllables.

Syllable-less languages

The notion of syllable is challenged by languages that allow long
strings of consonants without any intervening vowel or sonorant.
Languages of the Northwest coast of North America, including
Salishan and Wakashan languages, are famous for this.
For instance, these Nuxálk
(Bella Coola) words contain only obstruents:

'you spat on me'

'he arrived'

'he had in his possession a bunchberry plant' (Bagemihl
1991:589, 593, 627)

'seal blubber'

In Bagemihl's survey of previous analyses, he finds that the word
would have been parsed into 0, 2, 3, 5, or 6 syllables depending
which analysis is used. One analysis would consider all vowel and
consonants segments as syllable nuclei, another would consider only
a small subset as nuclei candidates, and another would simply deny
the existence of syllables completely.

This type of phenomenon has also been reported in Berber languages (such as Indlawn Tashlhiyt
Berber) and Mon-Khmer languages
(such as Semai, Temiar, Kammu). Even in English there are a few
utterances that have no vowels; for example, shh (meaning
"be quiet") and psst (a sound used to attract
attention).